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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs told Obama point blank that those jobs are never coming back. We're better off looking for alternatives.

They will only come back if you can convince an American to be ‘integrated and nimble’, translation, to live in a dorm attached to the factory so he can be woken in the middle of the night, given a biscuit and a cup of tea, and put on a unplanned twelve-hour shift.

We needn’t debate whether this is right or wrong, good or bad, it is enough to recognize that the likelihood of negotiating such arrangements with Americans is remote.

I think Apple would be a force to be reckoned with in union-busting. As I understand, everything is done to prevent Apple Store employees from unionizing already.

And hey, I understand the need for a break-neck pace for a company that constantly disrupts its own market and has to turn around the ship in the blink of an eye in order to stay on top of the business. I don't know if it's possible to bring back the manufacturing jobs to the States without breaking basic labour condition rights.

> As I understand, everything is done to prevent Apple Store employees from unionizing already.

It amuses me how modern-day union-busters like Apple and Whole Foods do everything to prevent their employees from unionizing by...providing good pay and benefits. Funny that.

But he also noted supreme disappointment in the situation, as he'd built such a factory in Fremont (?) to build NeXT machines twenty years earlier. I think the issue is that all the suppliers are in the same area, which is in China, and that synergy was created by China to make the current manufacturing base only viable in China. Wise on their part. Maybe the US politicians had less foresight?

Oh, so now he's an economist as well? Interesting.

Mr. Jobs was not an economist and never claimed to be. He was the CEO of a company in the centre of the issue being discussed, and he gave his anecdotal opinion as someone with a clearly expert knowledge of the situation.

The Internet is a bitch. If an economist stands up and says “This is the case with tech jobs,” he’ll be shouted down as an academic with no real-world experience in the tech sector. If an expert in the tech sector stands up and says “This is the case with tech jobs,” he will be shouted down for lacking the academic credentials to offer an opinion.

Tough room.

They know the jobs aren't coming here. We know it. So why do they try and distract us with this fluffy propaganda? Apple thinks we're all stupid. As long as their share price keeps climbing they'll keep doing shit like this, and PROVE that we're all stupid.

Isn't 1/2 million jobs better than one at all? You sound like you want Apple to disappear from the face of the earth.

No, they're big and successful and I buy their products. I just want them to be honest.

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